¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

Wishing you a happy New Year. If you've been following our blog, you may have noticed that we changed our picture and blog description. Last year when we began this enterprise, we were leaving the working world and transitioning into retirement. Once retired, we quickly realized how much we enjoyed it; the transition was not difficult.  “Every day’s a Saturday” as my former boss said after he retired.

Sunrise, Mar de Cortés

Traveling had a lot to do with easing the transition. We sold our house in northern Colorado, got rid of a lot of stuff, put the rest in storage, packed the truck and headed to Mexico. We loved northern Colorado, but didn't want to spend another winter there. We sold our snow shovels in a garage sale and gave our winter clothes to Goodwill.

Traveling, especially in a foreign country, replaces workplace goals and social interactions with new goals and interactions. Traveling requires attention to daily needs – where to stay, what to eat and what to do – and interacting with locals and expats to meet those needs. Learning was a significant and enjoyable part of our working lives. Traveling is also about learning – new places, new cultures, new experiences and new languages.

On the way to Barra de Navidad

Rande has studied Spanish since the 1980s when we began traveling in Central and South America. Without her language skills, traveling would be more challenging, but not impossible. Yo aprendo Español. I'm learning Spanish, but slowly. Learning a new language is supposed to be good for an aging brain. I need to work harder at it; my brain is aging faster than I'm learning Spanish.

Speaking of learning, here are some of the things we've learned in the past year.

Goods are expensive and services are cheap

Mexico gets a third of its gross domestic product (GDP) from exports (link) – primarily autos, electronics, televisions, computers, mobile phones, LCD displays, agricultural products and commodities (link) – so it makes a lot of consumer products. Per capita GDP in Mexico is about $18,000 USD compared to about $52,000 USD in the United States (link). Products priced competitively for the global market are relatively more expensive in Mexico than in the U.S. I bought a digital watch in La Paz that was made in China by a Japanese company for about $20 USD; the same watch in the U.S. costs about $20 USD.

Mexico gets a third of its GDP from imports (link) – primarily industrial and agricultural machinery, aircraft and repair parts for autos and airplanes (link). The duty and taxes on imported goods average 14% (vs. 5.6% in the US) and the sales tax is 16% of the value plus duty and custom fees (link), which explains why imported goods from developed countries are expensive. An example: in the local supermercado, soy sauce (salsa de soya) made in Mexico costs $17-22 MXN; soy sauce made in China costs $22-33 MXN; and soy sauce made in the U.S. costs $52-65 MXN.

Salsa de soya

In Mexico, half the people had incomes less than $4,500 USD in 2010 (link). So it’s not surprising that services provided by a workforce, 63% of whom have less than a 10th grade education (link), are not expensive. An hour and a half of labor to repair a rear brake on our Toyota cost $300 MXN ($22 USD).

Our Toyota is repaired in Loreto

This also applies to professional services. The doctor’s fee in Chapala for diagnosing Rande’s gastrointestinal illness was $200 MNX ($15 USD); the medicines she prescribed were twice that.

Expect uninvited guests

Every place we've stayed in Mexico, whether it was a five-story condo or a cement-block house with a palapa roof, we've shared the place with Asian house geckos (Gekkonidae). This was true in the desert of southern Baja and the tropical coast of Jalisco. House geckos are nocturnal and rarely seen during the day, unless you disturb their hiding place, like a picture hanging on a wall. They are territorial and social; you hear their high-pitched chirps at night as they communicate among themselves. They hunt insects and spiders, and prefer hunting in open spaces. We've seen them on the ceiling at night chasing moths among the lights. They occur in woodlands and forests, but are most abundant in urban environments on the walls of buildings, hence their common name. In some countries where they've been introduced, they are considered pests and a threat to native gecko populations (link).

House geckos in Santa Cruz

House geckos are native to Southeast Asia, but they've been widely transported by humans and are now established in Australia, East Africa, Mexico and South America in tropical and subtropical areas (link) and across the southern U.S. from North Carolina to California and Hawaii (link). House geckos are 7.5-15 cm (3-6 in) long, have small spines on their back and bands of spines on their tail. They vary in color from gray, beige or light brown (uniform or variegated) to greenish iridescence. They reach sexual maturity in one year and live about five years (link). House geckos can cling to vertical surfaces, including glass. Their adhesive ability is the result of special foot adaptations. Millions of small bristles (setae) on their toe pads have hundreds of microscopic projections (spatulae) that interact with molecules of the surface via attractive van der Waals' forces (link). Supposedly, geckos can hang by one toe.

House gecko in Loreto

One house that we rented had been vacant for several months and hosted geckos and American cockroaches (link) when we moved in. Occasionally I got up during the night to check the kitchen and bathrooms for cockroaches with a headlamp. I left their dead bodies on the floor at the base of a wall; in the morning, the cockroaches were gone, probably consumed by the geckos.

You will be exposed to new diseases

It began with mild, flu-like symptoms that quickly progressed to severe headaches, joint pain and fever alternating with chills. Rande thought she had dengue fever; I thought she had a bad case of the flu with migraine headaches. It was summer and we had rented a house in a gringo neighborhood of El Centenario 15 km (9 mi) west of La Paz in Baja California Sur. She had the name of a doctor in La Paz and made an appointment with his office. Dr. Buenaventura Diaz Lopez, a man in his 50s with a broad, smiling face and a stethoscope around his neck, was professional and relaxed. His office is located in a medical complex that included a small hospital, emergency clinic and clinical laboratory.

El Centenario west of La Paz

Rande had written her symptoms in Spanish on a piece of paper, which Dr. Lopez read. He did a general exam, asked questions in English and Spanish and ordered blood work, which was done by the laboratory in less than an hour. Rande paid for the  results and walked them back to Dr. Lopez. Her total leucocytes (white blood cells) and blood platelets were well below the normal range. Dr. Lopez gave her a prescription to relieve the symptoms and asked her to return in 5-6 days. One of the meds was an injectable steroid that came with a syringe, but no instructions. I wasn't about to give her a shot and suffer the consequences if it was painful or in the wrong place. We went to the hospital where she found a nurse to do the injection. She found it amusing that I wouldn't inject my spouse.

There are an estimated 390 million cases of dengue fever worldwide each year (link). The disease is endemic in 100 countries in Asia, the Pacific, the Americas, Africa and the Caribbean (link). Dengue is caused by four closely-related, single-strand RNA viruses (serotypes); infection by one type does not confer resistance to the others. [A 5th serotype was recently discovered in Malaysia (link)] The viruses are transmitted to humans by Aedes mosquitoes (primarily A. aegypti), “…an insect closely associated with humans and their dwellings. People not only provide the mosquitoes with blood meals but also water-holding containers in and around the home needed to complete their development…” A. aegypti is resilient and difficult to control or eliminate. Their eggs can withstand desiccation and survive several months without water on the walls of containers (link). Dengue is a re-emerging disease in the Americas where many countries were declared free of A. aegypti in the mid-1950s. In the late 1970s, breakdown of mosquito-control measures led to an increase of A. aegypti populations and a concomitant increase in the incidence of dengue (link). 

A week later she went back to the doctor. Her leucocytes and blood platelets had returned to normal levels. “Your dengue is done,” Dr. Lopez said in English as he read the lab results. “You knew I had dengue” Rande said and Dr. Lopez nodded his head and said “Yes.” His bill was $700 MXN. The blood tests were $232 MXN, the prescriptions were $337 MXN and the injection was $40 MXN. The total was less than $100 USD. It was another month before Rande felt fully recovered.

Serotypes 1 and 2 are found in Baja Sur and all four serotypes are found along the Pacific Coast of Mexico (link). There were 56,600 reported cases of dengue in Mexico in 2013 and 28,100 in 2014. In 2014, Baja California Sur had the highest number of reported cases (15% of the total) and over 60% of those cases were in La Paz (link). Dengue was first documented in the Americas near the end of the 18th century, possibly as a result of the slave trade (link).

The four dengue serotypes originated independently, probably in the last hundreds or thousands of years, from an ancestral virus that infected non-human primates in the forests of West Africa and Southeast Asia. In forests, non-human primates are the reservoir host and transmission occurs by mosquitos. Spillover (cross-species transmission) happens when infected mosquitoes feed on humans that move into or work in the forest. Humans are the only known reservoir host in developed areas. When a person is infected by an Aedes mosquito, the virus multiplies. When that person is bitten by a non-infected mosquito, the virus can be transmitted and the cycle completed. The movement of infected humans and Aedes mosquitoes (in cargo) has spread the disease around the world (link).

You will try (and like) unusual foods

It’s inevitable. Someone will offer you something to eat that you've never heard of or seen before. If you're like us, you'll try almost anything once (except raw shellfish from the local bay). Here are some things that we tried and found very tasty.

Jackfruit at roadside stand near Tepic

Inside the jackfruit

We saw these weird fruits growing on trees in along the Pacific Coast in central Mexico and for sale in the roadside fruit stands. The woman at one stand had sliced a large fruit into sections; she gave us several pieces. The yellow flesh is sweet with a distinct taste and a meat-like texture. The white seeds can be cooked or roasted. We bought jackfruit for snacks, but only after the fruit had been dissected.

Jackfruit for sale in Sayulita

The jackfruit tree is a member of the mulberry family (Moraceae) and is native to southern Asia where it grows in tropical lowlands. It's the largest fruit produced on a tree reaching 36 kg (80 lbs) and 50 cm (20 in) in diameter and has been introduced and cultivated in Central and South America (link).

Fruit of the guamuche

These twisted seed pods came from a large tree near our house in La Manzanilla. Small flocks of parrots visited the tree early in the morning to eat the fruit. One day we saw an older man with a long pole knocking pods out of the tree. We asked if the fruit was good to eat. He said it was guamuche (or huamuche) and opened one of the pods. He ate the pinkish-white fruit, spit out the black seed and gave the rest to us. The fruit was firm and sweet. Over the next couple weeks, we picked several ripe pods for snacking.

Guamuche tree with seed pods

Guamuche is a flowering tree in the pea family (Fabaceae). It grows 10-15 m (30-50 ft) high along the coast and adjacent highlands of Mexico, Central America and northern South America (link). The small seed is dispersed by birds, which explains the concentration of black seeds beneath the limbs where the parrots ate.

Finescale triggerfish (cochi) on a reef near La Paz

Finescale triggerfish (Balistidae), known as cochi in Mexico, are common in the Sea of Cortez and along the Pacific Coast of Mexico. They make great ceviche and are highly prized by local populations, so there are commercial and sport fisheries for them. 

Ceviche made with cochi in a marisco restaurant in Mazatlán

Cochi occur in less than 37 m (120 ft) of water singly and in groups on rocky reefs, boulder slopes and adjacent sandy areas and grow to about 75 cm (2.5 ft) and weigh 3 kg (7 lbs). They feed on sea urchins, small crustaceans and mollusks**.

Bullseye puffer (botete diana) on a sandflat near La Manzanilla

Bullseye puffer (Tetraodontidae), known as botete diana in Mexico, are common to occasional in the Sea of Cortez and along the Pacific Coast of Mexico. They are generally solitary (although I have seen them in small groups) and feed on algae, corals, crabs, mollusks, sponges, starfish, urchins and worms over shallow sandy bottom (link) **. The fishermen of the Central Pacific Coast call them crab fish, which is the bait they use to catch them. We bought several fresh botete at a fish market in Melaque at the recommendation of the owner; they were delicious.

Some smooth puffers (tetraodontids) contain tetrodotoxin, a potent neurotoxin produced by bacteria in the animal’s tissues (think of fugu sashimi prepared by specially-trained Japanese chiefs). A popular Baja sportfishing website reports that the potential health threat to humans from consuming bullseye puffers is unknown and recommends not eating them (link). 

**Humann, P. and N. DeLoach. 2004. Reef Fish Identification Baja to Panama. New World Publications, Inc. Jacksonville, FL. 343 pp.

Sometimes you can drink the water

In most of the places we've stayed, we bought bottled drinking water (agua potable) either at a small water purification plant (el agua purificada), which will fill your empty, 5-gallon bottle (garrafon), or at a supermercado or tienda (small store) where you exchange an empty garrafon for a full one.  The cost is generally $10-12 MXN (less than $1 USD).

Agua purificada in Loreto advertising 2 for the price of 1 on Wednesdays

Inside el agua purificada

We cooked, washed dishes and showered with the municipal water that was piped into the houses where we stayed, but drank bottled water. In Mazatlán and Puerto Vallarta, we stayed in condos that had building-wide purification systems, and in Ajijic, we stayed in a house (owned by a gringa) with its own purification system (filtration with reverse osmosis).

Reverse osmosis (ómosis inversa) unit

Stay tuned for more lessons learned (advertently or inadvertently).